Monsters Make The World Go Round
by AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: An Eddie-Sally retrospective, from attempted rape to the conception of the next generation. Short fic, my first for watchmen.


_So, yeah. I have never written for Watchmen before, and my knowledge is patchy to say the least. Sorry._

Sally remembers the pain. She remembers the punch to the gut, the roar of adrenalin infused blood in her ears. Remembers being slammed against the end of the pool table, the wind knocked out of her. How even her desperate gulps for air had not drowned out the snick of the belt buckle behind her. How those heavy boots had felt, pushing her own shining heels apart on the polished wood of the floor.

Alone with him and her breath, with the feel of a leather gloved hand on her bare back.

Rewind and before, before the riot of blood in her ears, before that moment of breathless nothing when she heard that belt buckle go.

Eddie had pressed his nose to her put up hair, inhaling like a dog. Thick leather clad fingers pressing to the taut line of her suspender and the soft flesh beneath. She'd struck out, hit him and heard his surprised, guttural laugh. Not angry, no – but engaged. A laugh that said 'Game on' or some such epithet.

She'd held up a finger like a school teacher, said 'Eddie' like you'd say to a dog.

And before that, before he'd scented her – he'd watched her remove her yellow silk, pare herself down to her black bodice, boots and stockings. He'd leant in the doorway and watched.

It was nothing new –from billboards to TV to magazines she'd appeared in next to nothing, baring herself and smiling with red lips, an inclusive smile and a flash of her pale breasts.

She wondered how many of her Eddie had already possessed in his way. Paper figures, the paper ghost of the Silk Spectre.

Fast forward and she's there against the edge of the table, legs open and face burning, bleeding from his blow to it. A tendril of her hair shaken loose and hanging in her eyes. Eddie behind her, belt open and her suspenders stretched tight, the thin silk mesh of her panties damp.

The costumed cutie, red lipstick smeared, one pearl earring unclipped, rolling on the floor like an eye torn out. She pressed her cheek to the green fabric of the table, breathed out once.

Then the moment was gone, Hooded Justice dragged Eddie away, scuffles and recriminations – such an ugly business.

But that was civilisation, raised voices and shrill cries. Casting out the poisoned and perverted.

What happened before, the moment of stillness, the snick of the belt, was carnally, intentionally perfect. Something dark and animal and everything that Eddie spoke about when he scoffed at the high intentions of the rest of them.

People were broken. Trying to pretend that they weren't animals.

But that was before.

Now Sally stands in her good black dress and fur collared coat in front of the door to Eddie's apartment. Two pearl earrings and discrete pumps. All the trappings expected of a modern and classy woman.

Underneath, the pool table, the blood, a laugh and the vicious joy in striking out. That was the part no one spoke of. She could save people, combat grown men as long as it was for the people. For good American values and the protection of civilisation. She could not do what Eddie had done. No 'costumed cutie' shot men at point blank range in fields of the dead. No woman held a man down and watched the life roll out of him.

She knocks with a gloved hand and the door takes its time in being opened. On the other side is Eddie, racoon mask discarded for the night, dressed in a white towelling robe, the air smelling slightly of drink and smoke.

"Sally." Not surprise, though it's been a long time, not triumph – but as if she'd been long expected and he'd been fretting over her dangerous journey.

He moves aside and she enters, nervously stripping off her gloves and pocketing them, shedding her coat. She hands it to him.

"Could you..."

Eddie tosses it across the back of a chair, the coat stand pointedly unused.

He looks at her like one of her pictures, an image laid bare to titillate. One of her photo spreads is pinned to the wall, another beside it. She has been here even before she arrived.

Eddie unties the robe, cigar secured at the corner of his mouth. Underneath he's naked, dark hair on scarred skin, toned and laid over a strong, bulky figure. Her carefully outlined eyes travel over him as he had gazed at her, following his body down until her eyes take in the outline of his groin, bare to her eyes.

She unfastens the leather belt around her middle, pulls the top of the dress down, pushes the waist, kicks the fabric off over her heels. Underneath is what she wore before, the black bodice, the silk scrap of underwear and the stockings, one with the ladder in it.

Eddie's hunger is obvious and practical. It's seizing hands and his mouth on her shoulder. It's lips and teeth and that one hard push inside.

He takes her over the side of the couch, hands raking at the expensive trappings of her costume. Sally looks up at her pictures on the wall, at the cherry lips, the innocent pin up beauty. Eddie groans and she can feel pleasure, sudden and all consuming. For the first time in a long time, she is what she is, a female of a species. More connected to the killers and rapists than to her fellow hero's, with their high ideals and simplistic philosophies.

In the end neither of them is perfect, they both want things for themselves.

Would take them without a hesitation for decency, for civilisation.

If given a chance.


End file.
